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14 October 2012

On 14th October 1066 much of the English aristocracy fell on Senlac Hill near Hastings.

This is the battle that people think of when considering British history in 1066, but as the last two blogs intimate, a lot of back-story led to the defeat of King Harold Godwinson by the Norman French, not least of which was the weather. How different Mediaeval England might have been if the 'fair wind' had brought William, Duke of Normandy, to the south coast first. His force had been expected all summer and may well have been defeated on the shingle beach. That would have left Harold Godwinson with a single forced march north to tackle the men who had sailed in longships with Harald Hardraada of Norway. Would the English northern fyrd taken the day? Who knows.

It was never my intention to write a long post commemorating this date. Then I came upon a link via The Battle of Stamford Bridge Society, and instead I decided to copy it here. It is from The Battle of Hastings 2006 - a major re-enactment, if nowhere on the scale of the original. It is courtesy of English Heritage and television presenter, Dan Snow, narrates.

If you ever thought re-enactors were soft, here's twelve minutes to prove otherwise. Would you stand in a shield-wall beneath a hail of arrows, albeit not metal tipped? Without wearing a helmet? And that, as the saying goes, is the least of it.

6 October 2012

It’s that time of year again, the anniversary of when the
course of Saxon England irretrievably juddered hard left. Over the past couple
of weekends I’ve attended guided walks led by the ebullient Russell Marwood of
the York Archaeological Trust. They were a delight and I shall be looking out
for some more.

The first was around the battlefield of Gate Fulford when, on 20th
September 1066, the invasion led by King Harald III
of Norway – Harald Hardraada to most of us – sent the English northern earls
and the raised fyrd reeling. We modern battlefield walkers returned to our cars
and flasks of hot coffee, leaving the risen ghosts of the victors to finish off
the dying and march the couple of miles to the gates of York
to demand food and hostages.

Last weekend we were at Stamford
Bridge, east of York.
Here, on 25th September
1066 the Norse army, or most of it, was disporting itself during a
warm and sunny day. Harald Hardraada was awaiting more hostages, this time from
northern England,
in an attempt to persuade the population to support his march south for the
Crown.

Unbeknown to him, the Crown, in the shape of King Harold
Godwinson, his crack housecarls and a Midlands fyrd
raised enroute, caught them off-guard after a forced march that would take some beating even today - about 185 miles
in four days. The result was not so
much decimation as obliteration. Mediaeval texts have it that up to 300
longships sailed up the Humber but only 23 sailed down.
Harald Hardraada and most of his nobles were not among the survivors.

Russell Marwood doing this thing

Except… did it happen at Stamford
Bridge?

As Russell Marwood explained, pinpointing the position of
any 1000 year old open battlefield is no easy task. Usually there is little in
the way of archaeological deposits. The victors, sometimes even the vanquished,
did not leave valuable armour, weapons and accoutrements lying among the dead,
even if, as a later writer maintained, the bleached bones of the fallen were
still to be seen decades later.

Much of the “evidence” for such a battlefield comes from
written texts, by triangulating information from several, in this case mostly from
the Norse sagas as the English were, shall we say, a bit busy. Also, routes
built by the Romans and maintained – and York
would have had plenty - have been lost to us, or their archaeological
footprints are still being discovered.

However, our group was led over the current bridge spanning
a very swollen River Derwent to gain a view of a “hollow-way”, which sounded,
and looked, as if it had come as much from the pages of one of JRR Tolkien’s
masterpieces as a descendant of a Roman road. The river had been tidal at this
time and Stamford – probably a
derivative of “stone ford” – was just that. We learned that it could be crossed
on foot at low tide as late as the 1960s. So what need was there for a bridge –
the one a single heroic Norseman held for so long before a dastardly Englishman
pierced his nether regions from below while in a “tub”, or possibly a coracle?

There are hefty stone foundations behind the older modern
houses which might account for a bridge, and an old snicket – a pathway – still
leaves the spot, crosses the modern road and rises up between more houses. But
once a single thread is pulled, more than one tends to begin unravelling. Why
send a fella with a pike out in a boat to skewer an enemy holding a bridge? Why
not just loose a sheaf of arrows in his direction? Is the “rock that marks the
spot”, or at least commemorates the general area of the deed, out by a couple of
miles?

Commemorative seating at Stamford Bridge

This is where we find there are interesting people among the
group. Tom Wiles, from the area, is a re-enactor of the period strutting his
stuff under the banner of The Volsung Vikings. He is also one of the locals who
have formed the Battle of Stamford Bridge Society with a view to truly
commemorating the date of the battle. There was a fascinating exchange between
him and Russell Marwood, and the agreed opinion was that the Battle of Stamford
Bridge was as likely to be the Battle of Catton, especially as Roman roads have
been newly discovered in the area, and possibly the site of a bridge.

Methinks I need to lay my hands on a detailed Ordnance
Survey map of the area and do a bit of internet research prior to having
another day out. But this is for a series of books on the far horizon so
there’s no great rush. Who knows what research others might throw up in the
meantime?

As for the Mediaeval power struggle, it wasn’t so much Norse
1 – English 1 as the endgame for them both. King Harold Godwinson of England
had no sooner washed the blood from his sword in York
than word arrived that fair winds had allowed William the Bastard, Duke of
Normandy, to sail across the channel and his men were erecting pre-fabricated
fortifications near Hastings.

What must Harold have thought? “Damnit” must have been the
least of his epithets. Well, if he could do it once… And so he gathered his
housecarls and those uninjured in the battle and set off south with a steely
look in his eye. The Battle of Hastings took place on 14th October.
Alas, now the steel in his eye turned out not to be just an attitude of mind.

William II, Duke of Normandy became William the Conqueror and, after a series
of skirmishes which inflamed his temper no end, he was crowned King of England on
Christmas Day 1066. For what happened after that the Brits still bear a grudge.